Posts tagged “behind the scenes”

Hehehe…! Oh, and it feels so good.

One of my best buddies, Linden Valentine (who you see plastered all over this blog) asked me to shoot his engagement shoot to the loveliest person ever, Katie Avalanche. Knowing Linden, I knew there was a curve ball. Wait for it….

COSPLAY ENGAGEMENT. YUSSSSSSS. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate engagement shoot for Linden and Kate. I love shooting cosplay, so of course, I was PUMPED. Weeee!~

Because Linden & Kate live in New York, scheduling shoots with them is always tricky. We scheduled the shoot for earrrrlyyy on MLK because they were driving from Charlotte, NC to New York (shewww~ no thank you!) and could take a pit stop to see me and shoot in Raleigh along the way.

Of course, I responsibly got a ton of sleep and was super rested when Kate and Linden arrived…

Once Linden and Kate arrived, it was time to start getting ready for the shoot! Because they were cosplaying a podcast that I wasn’t familiar with (Welcome to Night Vale), I asked them to tell me the story so I could understand the characters. When shooting cosplay, I try to do my part to bring the characters to life through their posing and photos.

I am not even going to try to explain what the radio show is about, so have this description from their website instead:

WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE is a twice-monthly podcast in the style of community updates for the small desert town of Night Vale, featuring local weather, news, announcements from the Sheriff’s Secret Police, mysterious lights in the night sky, dark hooded figures with unknowable powers, and cultural events.

Turn on your radio and hide.

Kate would be cosplaying Cecil, the Night Vale local and narrator of the show, and Linden would be cosplaying Carlos, a scientist who comes to Night Vale to study all the strange occurrences that happen in the town. In the show, there is a scene where Cecil and Carlos are sitting on the hood of a Prius under an Arby’s sign, which we decided would be a perfect location for this shoot. It is also extremely convenient that I drive a Prius, hehehe ;D

Hubba hubba!!

Time to gather my equipment and head to Arby’s!

I am going to save all of my Behind the Scenes photos for the end, because this series tells a story and I would hate to interrupt it! Here we gooooo~

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How cuteeeeeeeee are theyyyyyyyyyyy???????

Shooting with Alexa x Linden x Kate does not come without some ridiculous moments and unforgettable laughs. Here are a few of my favorite highlights:

The constant battle against the wind that Linden’s luscious hair was constantly losing. Cue infuriated Linden.

Linden’s very “serious” proposal. I should mention that he was a big cry baby about the concrete + knee situation, so I generously gave him a bag of unpopped popcorn and pajama pants to rest his little princess knees on. I think the fact that I had a bag of popcorn and pajamas laying around in my car probably reveals a bit too much about my lifestyle.

When Linden kissed Kate and his facial hair rubbed off on her face, hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

And whatever the hell this is:

I think I should also probably mention that I am 90% sure that we may or may not have caused a minor car accident because we are just a silly looking group of people doing unusual things. Most people aren’t accustomed to seeing a pink-headed Alexa-monster leading a photoshoot in an Arby’s parking lot. PSA: Friends don’t let friends watch photoshoots and drive.

So, I’m sorry if this was you. Keep your eyes on the road next time!

After we finished shooting, we went inside to see the excited Arby’s employees (they loved watching our shoot!) and to chow down on some delicious fast food. #modeldiet

I am on a blogging ROLL lately! Damn! Today we are going back to April to visit a shoot with the lovely Britni McIntosh! You may have noticed, I am still digging through my older shoots that need to be blogged, and I am doing so in no particular order. I hope you like this trip down memory lane that I’ve been doing. I swear I will catch up one of these days….

Britni is the sweetest little thing. I have known her for ages. We grew up in the same crowd of friends and now we are all old and still friends. Woohoo! Britni was actually one of my very first guinea pigs EVER when I got my first camera (Nikon D60) a few years ago. While Britni kicked ass on that shoot, looking at my old work kind of burns my eyes out. I’m making these really small so no one can actually see them.

HAHAHA. If it gives you any indication of how old this is, I found this photo on an old hard drive from 2009 in an folder entitled “Myspace”…….

ANYWAY.

….. I’ve lost my train of thought.

Now it’s 2013. And I got to shoot her again for the first time since my early days. It was pretty stoked!! I’ve wanted to shoot her for so long but she lives in Indiana and I live in Washington, DC. Somehow, the stars aligned and we were both vacationing in North Carolina at the same time in April and we were able to schedule a quick shoot together!

We decided to do two looks together. One sweet and happy and one dark and gothy. Since this photoshoot is from April, I’ve lost all of my Behind the Scenes photos, so I am shamelessly borrowing them from Britni’s instagram. Thanks honey bunny!

Two look sneak peek!

Knowing that we had limited time and two looks, I decided to shoot the black and white look first. I wanted to save the pink look for shooting the sunset because I knew the colors of the sunset would pop more against the pink than they would against the black. We started in an abandoned fraternity or sorority (??) house. I used to live near this abandoned building with the greek letters Delta Kappa and an owl painted inside it. In my extremely minimal google searching, I still don’t know (or really care) what it is/was. All it is now is a pretty cool photo spot.

On to the goods! First setup:

& a lighting test outtake of me falling.

Yes, those striped legs belong to yours truly.

For this next set, I wanted to try some seriously low key lighting. I love the way the deep shadows play into the feel of this image.

And the outtakes. Here is Britni making some adorably menacing faces in our lighting test.

Then we popped outside for a few more shots by this creepy lamp post in the backyard of this house.

SppooOoOoOky.

All done here! Time to lighten the mood a little bit and change outfits! Planning shoots while in different states can be difficult. We were each picking pieces of our wardrobe for the shoot. After texting pictures back and forth we settled on something that looked like this.

Now that is some good e-planning!

Britni got changed and we headed out to our next location: a huge field of beautiful yellow flowers.

Once we were there, we had some time to kill while waiting for the sun to go down.

Well, may as well take some pictures!

La la la laaaaaaa… Just waiting for the sun…

While the lighting is pretty, it’s not the lighting I was looking for.

And then…

BAM! Perfect! Time to knock em dead!

OH yeah! I forgot to mention! These photos were featured in Deadly Dessert Magazine’s May issue that had a flower theme. Check out our spread! Woohoo!

Hey hey hey! Today we are taking this flashback even farther back than my last post. This one takes us ALLLLLLL the way back to January 8th. Oh, you know, it’s only been about six months. Totally a reasonable turnaround time on a blog post, right?….. Right?

Back in January, alt. model Fate (if you follow my blog or Facebook regularly, you should be very aware of her by now!) was asked to shoot the cover of a magazine for the latex/nerd issue. I’m not going to get into it because it’s annoying, but for reasons beyond our control, the magazine fell through and the cover was given to someone else. Since it was their July issue, I couldn’t release the photos until recently, so I suppose this blog post isn’t SO late….. *searches for more excuses for being a slowpoke*

ANYWAY, moving on to our shoot day! January 8th!

Purple latex.
Rainbow hair.
Pikachu hat.
Video games.
Fate.

I think that’s all the I really even needed to write in this post, so I am just going to stop there.

My assistant helping out with our first setup. She did a great job because these pictures turned out awesome. Thanks Pipes!

Wheeeeeww.. Is it hot in here?

On to our second setup! For this setup, I had Fate lay on the floor on a blanket, surround by my classic Nintendo 64 games, while I stood on a stool over her shooting down. She is a brave girl because I am clumsy and the stool was wobbly.
**DISCLAIMER: No models were harmed in the making of these super hot photos.**

^^ One of my favorite photos ever.

Ahhhhh!! I love this set so much. Four of my favorite things in one! Fate, N64, Pokemon, and latex! ❤

Here I am post-shooting! I often work in pajamas. That’s just how I roll.

Also, as you can see here, the blanket Fate was laying on was blue. I used a layer mask and a hue shift in post to make it appear purple to match Fate’s latex. Gotta work with what you got! I hope you liked the final results as much as I do.

Hey guys! I had the pleasure of shooting RockStar Wigs‘ launch of their newest collection, the Godiva Collection. This collection is based off of the legendary Lady Godiva who rode through town naked on horseback in protest of taxation. The designer of RockStar Wigs wanted the photos to reflect the inspiration of the collection as much as possible by shooting all of the launch photos in the nude.

I teamed up with alternative model Fate and Sweet Trade Photography for a marathon shoot day in Clarksburg, Maryland. My plans for the day included shooting the Godiva in black plum, dark brown, and milk tea on Fate. So we headed out to our location. Oh my gosh. How was this the hottest day ever? Not only was the temperature about five million degrees, we had a heavy rain the night before. Cue humidity. And mud. Lots of mud.

Location scouting in pink shoes. Mistake.

Lesson learned.

Shortly after sinking ankle-deep in the mud, we found a great location to shoot the lovely Fate as Lady G. After hauling all of our gear and wardrobe (for other shoots we had planned), it was time to get ready to shoot these bad boys!

While Fatewas shaving her legs (hahaha- way to be prepared!), Sarah from Sweet Trade Photography and I were being a bunch of weirdo goofballs and swinging the Godiva hair all around and making funny faces at each other. It was sooo hot out. That’s pretty much all I can remember about this shoot.

She is so incredibly stunning.

Anyway, back to Godiva. For some variety in the photos for the collection, I decided to shoot the other two colors, black and burgundy, on myself, in my home studio.

I often hear of photographers complaining because they don’t have a studio. Well ya know what? I don’t either. And I don’t have a spare room to make a studio in my apartment either. So I rearrange my living room and move my couches to different areas every time I need to make a studio setup. I hate when people make the excuse of not having enough space. I live in a tiny apartment in the city. There is always a way. /end rant

Oh my gosh. I am SO behind in blogging! Let’s time travel back in time together to January 12, 2013. WeeeooOoOooOooEeoooOooo. That’s my time travel noise.

*POOF*

Hi. Welcome to my January 12, 2013 blog post. Today, I was lucky enough to have a good friend of mine,Jazzmin Jolly, travel down from Philadelphia to come shoot with me! As if my friends weren’t all awesome and amazing as it is, they also all happen to be models. It’s the nature of the industry and one of the many perks of being a photographer. So when my friends come to hang out, we shoot! Yay!

Jazzmin and I started with a quick Ariel cosplay shoot before immediately being booted from National Harbor. Well. That is always fun. Not. But that’s neither here nor there. This post isn’t about that shoot. It’s about THIS shoot!

BA-BAM!

Jazzmin and I were featured in Essere Magazine for our The Doll in White photo set!
(Get the issuehere!)

Since we are now pros in time travel, let’s go back even farther. The whole idea came to me while I was location scouting a few days prior to Jazzmin’s visit. I read about a cool place online, so I thought I’d check it out as a potential photo location. After checking it out, I walked around through some trees for a bit and stumbled upon this little gem, which is actually way cooler than the original location that I had gone to scout! Don’t you love that? What a win!

So after a quick failure in National Harbor, we scooted on over to this location to switch to our little lolita doll shoot. Our mutual friend and lolita extraordinaire,Grace Valentine, let Jazzmin borrow one of her lolita dresses which turned out to be PERFECT with the house, the white bunny, and the extreme fog. I love to blow out images as it it, but man… This made it too easy!

Here is Jazzy getting ready in the car. We’re fancy like that.

After Jazz was all dolled up, we raided the house, and left with these amazing photos.

She looks so amazing! I love it! And the weather and the lighting… Ah! It’s been a long time since I’ve shot any natural light stuff, but I really dig what we got on this day in January. She was a serious trooper for sitting out in the cold in that dress. Thanks Jazz!

For more Behind the Scenes and a time lapse set to the wonderful weirdness of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, check out this video:

A few more Behind the Scenes. We might be a little out of control.

After we got home, we had a Pikachu party before Jazzy had to head back to Philly. Here is my darling assistant Pipes (looking very happy), and Jazzmin’s assistant Floppy Ears, sporting the Pikachu look.

And that’s it from my fun day with Jazzmin! Remember to check out her modeling page here: Jazzmin Jolly!

Hey guys! I have an exciting post for you today! Sweet Trade Photography invited me to shoot some latex outfits from Fetasia Latex and Scarlet Bliss (provided by Jade) with her earlier this week. I was so stoked to meet alternative model Fate and have the chance to shoot her. This girl can morph from fairy princess to sexy latex femme fatale in a matter of minutes. It was truly amazing to watch this girl work it. We decided to start off with more “normal” looks and progress to the latex shots at the end. Latex is a messy thing to shoot and if you’ve ever done it, you’ll know why we did it last. 😉

I LOVE working with Sarah from Sweet Trade Photography. We have only shot together one other time but I model for her quite frequently. Some of the best shots in my modeling portfolio are from this girl. She makes magic. But it’s so interesting to shoot alongside her because our styles are very different. We can shoot the same subject in the same setting and the same outfit and the images don’t look anything alike. I love that. We even have the same camera. I think that says a lot about artistic style and a photographers eye. Too cool. I also love shooting with Sarah because we get all of these cool Behind the Scenes pictures of us being goofy. Hehe!

Anyway, back to Fate. This first outfit is such a mashup of everyone’s things. Fate had this amazing flowy skirt that we paired with a Victorian-esque corset I brought, shoulder pieces from Amorous Cat’s Attic (provided by Jaded), and a dip into my magic bag of wigs.

Here I am adjusting Fate’s wig. The wig is from Cosplay Wigs USA (available here: CWUSA Curly Blonde). Also, I’d like to clarify that I am not a giant. Fate is just a munchkin. 🙂 xo

After pulling all of our resources together and getting everything all good to go, we went out to the woods in Sarah’s backyard. Time to make some princess magic happen.

Magic. I love it. It feels like she’s out in some far away world… Just a lost princess looking for her way home.

Next up, we stuck with the same kind of innocence of the first set. Fate switched into an adorable little dress, and we switched her into some dark brown long hair (Available here: CWUSA Long Straight Brown).

Haha!! Wig cap alert! Helping Fate get her wig on…. Always funny.

This time we went out to the front yard to grab some shots by some flowers. The sun was in an awesome spot for lens flare, and I am a HUGE sucker for flare if I can get it. So… here ya go!

Yesss! Sun flare love! And can I just point out how well Fate nails “innocent”? Very convincing… 😉

Another Behind the Scenes shot! This is Sarah shooting. She asked me to shake some flower pedals down onto Fate which led to this funny series….

On the way back into the house, the stairs jumped out at me as the perfect background against the dress and Fate’s beautiful pale skin contrasting with her hair and eyes. SO MUCH LOVE.

She is so beautiful!

After this, sweet and innocent time was over. Cue the latex. This black dress is by Scarlet Bliss.

In this Behind the Scenes shot, Sarah knocks out a few with Fate in Gothic Lolita Wigs’ Teal Bob (available here: GLW Teal Bob)

My turn! BAM.

See what I mean about this girl morphing? From super sweet and innocent to drop dead super sexy. Just wow. I am so impressed.

Time to switch into the last outfit. Latex takes some time to get into and get out of, so here is a picture of me and Sarah being silly in the mean time. La la la aaaa.

This latex is from Fetasia Latex (provided by Jaded). The wig is Gothic Lolita Wigs Red/White Split without the ponytails (available here: GLW Red/White Split). We decided to go for a more latex pinup look and I love the results!

Behind the scenes time!

My hair gets really psycho during shoots. There is nothing I can do!

The sun was so awesome that even the iPad (playing some really awesome Destiny’s Child… because who doesn’t love Destiny’s Child?) could catch it!

SO cute. Ah. This is just too much. To wrap up our marathon shoot, here is a lovely/goofy/what? shot of all of us together. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the photos and the behind-the-scenes look at a photoshoot with Alexa Poletti Photography and Sweet Trade Photography. That’s all for now! xo

Hey everyone!! Back in June, I held a contest on my Facebook Fan Pageto celebrate my page hitting one thousand fans (woohoo!). My contest was to win a free concept/fashion shoot and no one tried harder to win than Ms. Sharmela. I could not be happier that my contest brought this wonderful person into my life. She is the sweetest, most adorable, honorary Japanese girl (like me!) I have come across in a long time.

So after Sharmela kicked ass in my contest, the concept planning began. After ideas and ideas, emails, sketches, chats, and evaluation of my wig inventory, we finally settled on a fairy concept shoot. Executing a conceptual shoot from start to finish was the goal of my contest and I am happy to say that we nailed it.

We were joined by the fabDwana Blaqstar Stover, who styled Sharmela from head to toe AND doubled as a rockstar makeup artist. Here are a few behind the scenes shots of the “getting ready” process with Sharmela and Dwana:

Makeup is done! Looking great!

Add a wig (Gothic Lolita WigsWhite Curly Bob), headband, and earrings, and we are all done! Here is an adorable shot from Sharmela’s Instagram. Oh my god. Too precious.

You can follow me on Instagram @alexapoletti for Behind the Scenes shots, my modeling work, and photos of my cat. Mostly the cat.

So now that Sharmela is all fairy-ed out, it’s time to hit the gardens. I am pretty sure that all the kids in the surrounding area were convinced that she is actually a fairy princess.

Drum roll please!

1k Fan Contest Winner/Fantasy Fairy Shoot

Fun fact: This was actually a test shot, but I loved the complete innocence of this, so it made it into the final set.

She has the BEST smile ever ,right? It’s so contagious! At this point I decided I wanted to get a few natural light closeups and play with my 50mm f/1.4. It is my favorite lens for getting a super shallow depth of field. Since it’s a pretty cheap lens, it’s not much use until around f/2, but then it’s pretty sharp and great for the price. How adorable is this girl?

She has the best expressions… This is one of my favorite expression series that I have done! Also, how CUTE is that curly bob on her? I wish it looked like that on me! >.<

Here is a behind the scenes shot from our next location, taken by Dwana. By this point we were all disgusting and sweaty and hot and miserable, but still loving every minute of it. It’s all about loving what you do!

For photographers/those of you wondering, the only light used in this series was a Canon 580exII Speedlite with no light modifiers around 4pm.
This is all of the equipment that was used in this set: